Another American Adventure: John's birthday and a New Year

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

John's birthday and a New Year

We started out for Annie's market, where we were going to get some Italian stuffed mushrooms to celebrate John's birthday. But it was closed. We ended up at Bubba Gump's, which used to be Harpoon Louie's when we first came to Florida (on January 1st, 1980). I liked Harpoon Louie's better, but the shrimp was good.

But the view is the same and the gulls are still there.

John talking to his mother while a bird poots on his head (supposed to be good luck) ...

From there we meandered down to Phil Foster Park where we reminisced about our early Florida days when we sailed a lot. Decided that we needed a sailboat again. Saw a stingray.

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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.